The present invention relates to a patient support surface and, more particularly, to a patient support surface that is adaptable to multiple uses in medical and other emergency settings.
A variety of devices are used in hospitals and similar settings for supporting a prone patient. When an individual is injured, emergency teams often use a collapsible stretcher to carry the individual to treatment. If the injury involves a spinal or other injury requiring immobilization of the individual, a more rigid device such as a backboard is usually used. Both stretchers and backboards are generally formed with handles or holes for holding the device.
Once a patient is at a hospital, it is usually necessary to move the patient from the stretcher or backboard to other support surfaces such as wheeled gurneys or fixed beds, operating tables, and x-ray and CAT scan machines. Especially if the patient has spinal or unascertained internal injuries, each move to a new support surface involves potentially serious aggravation of the injury. It is therefore desirable to be able to adapt a single patient support surface to more than a single use.
In addition to the desirability of being able to adapt patient support surfaces to a variety of purposes, most patient support surfaces have common desirable physical characteristics. Great structural rigidity is important in such devices, as noted, for example, in Alich et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,956,885, which describes a patient support comprising a fiber-reinforced epoxy resin core with a coating being provided thereon, and which is incorporated herein by reference. Light weight and, preferably, buoyancy, is desirable, especially in field stretchers where it may be necessary to float an injury victim across a body of water. Benton U.S. Pat. No. 3,247,529, for example, discloses a litter bed formed from foamed-in-place, expanded foam plastic which is foamed into a plastic envelope of a desired size and is allowed to set. Further, the ability to collapse the patient support surface prior to and following use, such that it takes up relatively little space, is highly desirable. To this end, solutions have included those shown by Brock U.S. Pat. No. 3,449,776, which describes a patient support surface including telescoping segments, and Poehner et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,926,457, which describes a patient support surface having hinged segments foldable relative to one another, and which is described in more detail below.
In recognition of the desirability of multipurpose patient support surfaces, multipurpose devices such as the radiolucent hospital bed surface described in Poehner et al., which is incorporated herein by reference, and the transparent radiation penetrable stretcher panel described in Rush U.S. Pat. No. 4,193,148 have been devised. The surface described by Poehner et al. is a lightweight, multipurpose rigid surface adapted for use in x-ray machines and the like and has hinged joints for folding the surface when not in use. The surface comprises a synthetic sheet-like patient support element and an underlying synthetic corrugated reinforcing element spaced apart from the support element. The surface described by Rush, which is incorporated herein by reference, is a transparent panel, permeable or penetrable to x-rays, formed of flexible plastics material and riveted to a rigid rectangular perimeter frame.
As noted in the Poehner et al. patent, multipurpose support surfaces intended for use in x-ray, fluoroscopy, or "C"-arm mounted diagnostic or treatment equipment must comply with the United States Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) standard wherein surfaces lying in a wave path must produce no more attenuation than a Series 1100 aluminum sheet that is one millimeter thick ("F.D.A. one millimeter standard"). Accordingly, material selection for such applications has often been limited to thin skins of aluminum riveted over a frame or a variety of sheet plastics. Most of these materials do not generally stand up well to excessive loading situations in that rivet holes become elongated and material fatigue causes surface failures. Further, cleaning of such surfaces is made difficult where blood or other foreign matter becomes trapped in and around rivets, material joints, and hinge areas.